Developmental trajectories of non-native tone perception differ between monolingual and bilingual infants learning a pitch accent language

The developmental trajectories of tone perception among tone and non-tone language learning infants have received wide attention and discussion in recent decades under the perceptual attunement framework. Nevertheless, tone perception in infants from pitch accent and bilingual language backgrounds has not been well understood. The present study examined monolingual and bilingual Norwegian-learning infants’ discrimination of two Cantonese tone contrasts at 5 and 10 months, ages corresponding to the onset and offset of perceptual attunement. Results showed that while monolingual infants were sensitive to the salient contrast, bilingual infants showed sensitivity to both contrasts at 10 months. In sum, infant age and bilingual language background affected discrimination. Pitch accent language experience or contrast salience may also play a role. The finding that early bilingual experience facilitated tone perception is of particular interest. It suggests that infant perception could be enhanced by a more complex linguistic environment on a broader level. As this was observed only at 10 months, cumulative exposure may be required for infants in a complex bilingual environment. Future studies should disambiguate explanations generated from the current finding, ranging from neurocognitive plasticity to perceptual salience, and from experience-dependent to independent possibilities.